Weather Matters

Category: Hurricane Sandy

Massive post-tropical storm Sandy covered much of the eastern U.S. from Wisconsin to South Carolina. (Credit: NASA)

Today is the first anniversary of the formation of historic Hurricane Sandy, aka Superstorm Sandy, aka ‘The Frankenstorm,’ which wreaked havoc on the Northeast after tearing through Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas, and flooding parts of Palm Beach with enormous swells coming off the storm’s backside.

Waves of up to 20 feet or higher pounded Palm Beach County beaches as Sandy passed to the east, damaging buildings in Manalapan and the Lake Worth Pier.

The maximum wind gust from Sandy at Palm Beach International Airport was [More]

Hurricane Frances bears down on South Florida in September, 2004, one of the “analogue years” chosen by Colorado State researchers in this year’s pre-season forecast. (Credit: NASA)

UPDATE: Sandy, the October storm that wreaked havoc on the U.S. Northeast and triggered massive beach erosion in Palm Beach and much of the Florida East Coast, was retired today by the World Meteorological Organization.

Storm names are recycled every six years, but Sandy’s will be removed from the list due to the destruction the storm caused in Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas and the U.S. Sandy caused damage to the U.S. of about $50 billion — making it [More]

How cold will it be next weekend? That’s the question South Florida weather forecasters were struggling with on Monday, as major computer models were split on two President’s Day weekend scenarios — cool or downright nasty cold.

So far, the official National Weather Service forecast favors the former, with a projected low temperature in Palm Beach on Sunday morning of 50 degrees. West Palm Beach could see upper 40s with 30s west and north of Lake Okeechobee.

A blustery day will unfold with gusty winds and a high of only 68. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) gold standard forecast program — [More]

Hurricane Sandy will be analyzed and re-analyzed for months, and perhaps years. It’s possible, for example, that the storm could get an upgrade during the off-season, making it one of only two major hurricanes during 2012.

Sandy made landfall west of Santiago de Cuba on Thursday, Oct. 25 with 105 mph winds, just below Category 3 strength (111 mph to 129 mph). It had a well defined eye. But in their 5 a.m. advisory that day, National Hurricane Center forecasters wrote that “stronger winds may have occurred later when the southeastern portion of the eye wall moved onshore.”

The 2012 Atlantic hurricane season was unusual in many respects. One example: The most devastating storm of the year was Hurricane Sandy. Yet, Sandy’s pounding of the Mid-Atlantic was not officially considered a hurricane landfall by the National Hurricane Center, because it was classified as post-tropical before it hit.

Here are some other factoids from Weather Underground that came to my attention while researching an upcoming Daily News story on the end of the hurricane season:

– We had 19 named storms despite the fact that no systems formed in July or November.

A climate researcher has come up with a theory that we may have misjudged the impacts of global warming because we failed to take into account the rate of acceleration.

Bill Hay, a geologist at the University of Colorado, believes a combination of factors are interacting and that what he calls “critical feedbacks” are speeding everything up. In short, he believes that sea levels could rise by more than 3 feet by the end of the century.

Hay is presenting his research on Sunday at the annual meeting of The Geological Society of America in Charlotte, N.C.

Massive post-tropical storm Sandy covered much of the eastern U.S. from Wisconsin to South Carolina on Tuesday. See details below. (Credit: NASA)

There wasn’t any frost on Palm Beach pumpkins Tuesday morning but if you went outside to pick up your paper, chances are you didn’t linger. It was nippy, with wind chill values in the mid-40s.

Monday’s weather set records around South Florida for the coldest maximum temperature ever recorded for the date. It was 71 at Palm Beach International Airport, breaking the previous coldest high of 72 set in 1968. Miami and Fort Lauderdale also set record low maximums.

South Floridians look forward to fall sweater weather, but it appears this week we may head right to turn-on-the-heat weather more typical of December and January. Wind chills are expected to dive into the 40s by Tuesday morning.

It is indirectly due to the continuing impacts of Hurricane Sandy, which is getting ready to lash the Mid-Atlantic Coast with hurricane-force winds on Monday night. The intense low pressure system will spawn a dry cold front that blows down the Florida peninsula Sunday night and Monday and brings near-record low temperatures.

The expected low in Palm Beach Tuesday morning is 50 degrees with [More]

Hurricane Sandy made its closest approach to Palm Beach Friday morning as it moved toward the northwest about 180 miles off shore. Sustained winds were at 80 mph, and tropical storm force winds extended 275 miles from the center.

There was a 55 mph wind gust at the beach Friday morning, but rainfall has been limited.

The storm took on a ragged appearance and some slight weakening was forecast as Sandy makes its way north, up the U.S. Coastline. But it was expected to maintain hurricane strength until a [More]